SEO is considered by some to be a black art, while others have made a profit and built a reputation on the craft. I guess it's not too much different than sales or telemarketing, when you really think about it.

Sales is considered by many as more art than science. Swindling bastards who just want to get in your wallet, and sales managers who have little idea how these guys get it done, so they let it go by. Thankfully, that's the exception, rather than the norm because organizations have come to recognize that sales is a mission-critical element of their business and they've put discipline in place to control the BS.

Telemarketing, or market development, has the same connotations...but in the context of a business-to-business call center, a well oiled calling machine can be a constant source of leads and newly satisfied customers.

Where, then, are we still going wrong with search? And why are companies like Traffic-Power still able to garner business and results, in spite of all the bad press and reports of unethical tactics? Frankly, I'd argue that it's largely due to the maturity of the craft, and the perception that is widely held in most companies that SEO/SEM is something that's hard to comprehend and they need the first thing smokin' to help them get to the top of the search page. When, in reality, there are professionals out there, just as with any service, that can help to improve your position and subsequently build your business.

The point here is that, like any complex and seemingly undesirable subject, there are professionals who do good work for honest money who can truly help your business. However, the process of educating masses on how to navigate these waters is far from refined.

Stefanie Olsen had a great News.com article out yesterday talking about how National Public Radio is turning its audio content into textual transcripts in an effort to gain better visibility with search engines. The argument around this method is that is looks like "cloaking." However, I frankly think that their strategy is a "sound" one. If I want to type in something that Bob Edwards said yesterday, how else am I going to find it than through a text transcript of the broadcast?
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5221267.html

[Via Search Engine Watch]

[Steve @ Rugles]

Roland Tanglao has the following to say about SEM & SEO. Agreed.

In 2004, for a public site, you don't need:

* Search Engine Optimization firms (with rate cards that guarentee placement, which they have no control over)
* Search Engine Placement Software - (stop wasting your damn money, spend your time on the site!)
* Metadata tags - (It's not totally true that Google and other search engines ignore them - Title & Metadata should still still be included, but don't, by any stretch, rely on them)

Here's what you need at a minimum:

* Clean URLs - no ampersands, no technology specific suffixes (like .asp, .php, .pl, .py, etc.), URLs should be short and legible to people e.g. restaurants.com/burnaby/franksDiner instead of restaurants.com?ridiculousp1=burnaby&ridiculousp2=franksdiner
* Relevant, up to date content that is added and maintained regularly
* Generate a ping and update an RSS feed every time your site updates so that you will get indexed more often and thereby encourage people to read your site and link to it. (More info about pings and how RSS works in How Blogs work in 7 easy pieces)

[via Robin Good]

MarketingSherpa just released their take on the 7 hottest topics in search from the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Toronto.

1. Click-fraud
   
2. Local Search
   
3. Greater Description of Keyword
   
4. Dayparts (aka Dayparting)
   
5. Rise of the web analytics tools
   
6. More personalized search
   
7. Dynamic Pages are terrible for search engines
   

David Fry, CEO of Fry Inc, discusses the importance of focusing your search marketing enhancement efforts on the site's internal pages, especially for catalogers and those which very large database driven sites.

This is not new, but as the former director of such a site, I can attest to the fact that it really is a pain in the ass. As Fry says. “If you want your users to be able to find a product from any page, you have to make it available from every page with some form of navigation,” he says. You can`t have the expectation people will go back to a home page or category page and find it from there.”

Navigation is one thing, and if your site is properly constructed, it's potentially low hanging fruit. The bigger issue for me has always been things like dynamic description tags, title tags, anchor text & cross-linking across a multi-thousand page site, and maintaining your sanity while all that stuff is going on.

A lot of these technicalities are grounded in having a well designed Content Management System (CMS) that's not designed only for "user friendliness" so that your admin assistant can be an instant webmaster, but also for the basic tenants of search marketing management. Even the once humble MovableType allows you to changeup Title tags by using the title of the post (which could be, also, the title of an article, the name of a product, service, or whatever you want) which aids significantly in streamlining your search optimization and marketing efforts. More to the point, CMS's can also make other search related elements like anchor text (build a database that cross links keywords found in any page to their category listings elsewhere in the site) somewhat automated as well. This can be done using some contextual advertising like tools, only on your own products. That being said, CMS implementations often fail beyond miserably so be cognizent of the reasons behind why content management fails [by Jeffrey Veen] before charging ahead

Search engine success is about marketing, optimization, and through it’s less frequently considered part of the mix, web site design, says David Fry, CEO of Fry Inc. “It has a big impact," he says.

80% of the users on the Internet today use some major search engine to find sites and products, says Fry. “It used to be when you designed a web site, the first thing you’d focus on is what your home page would look like,” he says. But because search engines now deliver more shoppers directly to product pages, most major retail web sties now have less than 50% of their traffic starting at their home page, Fry says. Some, like Petco.com, have reported that as much as 80% of their traffic skips the home page.

“That means that all the brand equity and navigational elements and intelligence you put in your home page now has to be sprinkled throughout your site. The expectation was that people would follow this orderly path down through the web site, and you had the assumption that they were on a page having come from a previous page that gave some context to what they are seeing. That is no longer a certainly,” he says.

The design implications are that navigation has to be available on every page, and it must be crystal-clear, Fry adds. If a user comes to a site from a search on Google and lands on a product page, the merchant needs to have merchandising opportunities there for them. That goes the same for navigation, Fry says. “If you want your users to be able to find a product from any page, you have to make it available from every page with some form of navigation,” he says. You can`t have the expectation people will go back to a home page or category page and find it from there.”

The point is that so much of what retailers seek from search marketing is within their grasp, but it absolutely has to start with good design, and the site's goals need to reflect this. I know, basic stuff, but soooo many firms still blow these 2 steps. If your design firm doesn't do marketing, get marketing in the room with them to make sure that these details are considered. The best looking site is still a purple turd if it doesn't sell.

So, what happens when all of the people in an industry "get it" and all of the site's are perfectly optimized and competition is fierce? Never going to happen. Just like not everyone will ever have the balls to create a Free Prize:
(from the recent BBBT - on the subject of the Free Prize across an entire industry)

[Jeremy @ ensight] Q: Do you feel that if an entire industry were to 'get' the Free Prize and Purple Cow concepts that it would result in a saturation of these things?

[Seth Godin] A: Never going to happen. Not in my wildest dreams will a whole industry get these ideas. Even in ‘traditional’ fashion-based industries like toys and clothes, the vast majority of people are stuck in a web of boring, thinking it’s safer.

I do believe that once an industry starts getting really fashionable, the people who got in first (Armani) have an easier time staying out front.

So the books are really a call to action to get moving NOW before it’s harder to succeed with small efforts.

[Jeremy @ ensight] Editor's Note: Seth's right of course. There is no benefit to being immobile. Companies who pull back to what's safe, do only what they know, try what's worked in the past... Well, the world is littered with them. It's the Sony's, the Microsoft's, the Apple's, the GE's and the Virgin's of the world who are growing, succeeding and getting real attention, and for a reason: they are worth talking about. NOW.

[via Internet Retailer]

One of the biggest pains in the ass with any type of PPC campaign is getting the keywords. This is particulary difficult when a customer doesn't have any type of tracking setup on their site! (yes, there are still people who have websites and have never seen the stats...)

Anyway, Google is primed and ready to roll out a new service that I think I'll be using before too long.

Google’s technology would scan the site of a company and create a list of keywords that would likely show up in search queries. The prospective company would pay Google to scan their site in order to develop keyword lists. This would take the burden of having to manage large amounts of keywords away from advertising companies.

Now, if someone were to come out with a tool that plugged into an API of Google's new tool, and could hit the wordtracker database, and pull data from the Google Zeitgeist database, then we'd really be talking!

[via AdvertisingDay]

Sheri T. has written a concise and informative series of articles on the inextricable link between well architected websites and SEO. This is, as she goes on to point out, and area where many firms and SEO pros fail. If SEO is your goal, you really need the whole package. Well architected sites that account for the building blocks of site architecture are more apt to do well in search placement and usability. I know, you've heard this all before, but it's a damn shame how few firms actually follow along...

Consider...

Sure shit - Google actually does see some Flash files. They are now able to read both of the Flash menus on www.danavan.net, and render links from them. Also, according to the recent article on WebProNews, they are delving into the binary elements of Flash. This may very well knock down one of the strongest arguments against Flash to date.

You can find a very interesting tool (I should say toy) in http://ranking.thumbshots.com/

Apart from giving you a quite pretty graphical represantation of the comparison between the results of the search engines it provides some very interesting statistics concerning the overlapping and unique links.

The results show small percentages of overlap between the search engines - fact that is actually not unexpected. The differences in the first 100 links in the search engine results pages are both due to the different algorithm used by search engines (and the fact that most pages have been optimized only for the Google algorithm) and the size/type of the database between search engines.

[via Rugles.com]

Also:

New Tool Compares Search Uniqueness, Rankings

Search marketers are finding surprisingly little overlap in listings from one search engine to another. A new tool called Thumbshots provides graphical comparisons of the link overlap seen on a particular search term between one engine and another. Most often, more than 85 percent of the links in one set of results is different from those in another. The tool also shows that most links ranking highly in Google will generally rank much lower in Yahoo, and vice versa.
http://marketingvox.com/rd/9144

With today’s many PPC (Pay per Click), PFP (Pay for Placement) and PFI (Paid for Inclusion) programs from so many vendors, it’s no surprise that some people can be confused. While organic SEO (search engine optimization) search results (the ones you see at the left of Google’s screen) are considered the best and generally constitute the highest ROI, for companies that just launched a new site and that need sales real fast, these various ‘paid’ programs can make a big difference in their search engine marketing campaigns.

When a company has a large website, with more than 400, 500 or maybe 600 pages, a trusted feed program would make a lot of sense. With most trusted feed programs offered today, your site’s listings are given the same chance to rank among the generic or organic listings, usually on the same pages. With certain PFI programs such as Inktomi, you need to pay for each Web page you submit. Trusted feed programs differ from this, since you are required to pay a fee only for the clicks your links are getting.

Advantages of Trusted Feed programs:
1. Trusted feed is continually re-indexed
2. Appears as generic listings, not advertisements
3. Can boost more keyword and key phrase rankings
4. Greatly facilitates indexing of sites that are database-driven
5. Helps with indexing information that is buried deep in a site

[via Serge Thibodeau on ISEDB.com]

Poodle Predictor is a little known tactic for increasing web site traffic and yet it is so easy to use that anyone can do it.

When there simply type in the url that you want to check to see what your site will look like in search-engine results. You might be surprised to find that what you thought google or any other search engine would pick up from your site such as your carefully crafted description is not at all what google sees and presents to the public.

Keep changing the text at the top of your url until you get exactly what you want your visitors to see. Write new text if needed.

This will increase the amount of traffic that you get since most people don't know about this trick

[via Trafficology & Laurette Trudeau, http://www.highrankingsolutions.com]

Stephan Spencer of NetConepts just published a new article about gleaning competitive SEO intelligence from your competitors' websites. Check it out

The article purpots to give you tools on how "you can learn how to reverse-engineer your archrivals' tactics and join them at the top of the search results heap."

[via CatalogAge - Casing the Competition]

Local Goes Live By Aaron Swartz

Google Local integrates yellow pages-style information right into your search. Search for pizza 54217 (Luxemburg, WI - Where I live) or plumbers Luxemburg, WI and up will pop a little compass with a couple results. Click the compass, and you'll get a full listing of nearby results, with distance, maps, directions, related web pages, phone numbers, and more. You can narrow it down by category and distance, and look at a map of all the results.

Google's really done a nice job of combining various sources of information for this service.

Answer: With PFP, you are paying for top results, whereas with Site Match you are just paying to be listed in the index.

With Site Match, users pay an annual subscription fee to submit their URLs for review. This does not guarantee inclusion into the Yahoo index; however, Site Match does promise more exposure for users, claiming the sites accepted will reach 75-80% of Internet users and 50% of searchers.

THE NEW RULES OF SEARCHING
Some Internet search sites let advertisers pay to ensure inclusion in a user's search results, while others don't.

Here are the policies of some of the major players:
• Yahoo: Allows paid inclusion
• Google: Doesn't allow paid inclusion
• Ask Jeeves: Allows paid inclusion
• Time-Warner (AOL): Doesn't allow paid inclusion
• Microsoft (MSN): Allows paid inclusion

Related Resources:
ClickZ: Yahoo!, Overture Debut New Paid Inclusion Program
WebProWorld: Yahoo launches their own Pay for Inclusion Program
netimperative.com: Yahoo! goes 'pay for exclusion!'
Wall St. Journal: Yahoo Search Results To Include Paid Links (subscription)

I'm not sure if this is such a *great* way to check how many pages of your site Google has indexed, but it is *one* way to do it. (another is by using the Google search string method: allinurl:www.danavan.net site:danavan.net)

Also, will Google index your site more extensively is you sign up for the co-branded free search tool that they offer? That, my friends, is worth an experiment.

Check it out:

Thanks to Brent Winters and the Market Position Monthly for this tip on the U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray report on the state of the Search Engine market.

In March 2003, U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray published an industry report titled "The Golden Search - Dynamics of the Online Search Market." Its key findings included the following:

- Online search industry represents a major growth market, growing at a compounded rate of 35% annually.
- The key driver of growth is the increased popularity of search as the most efficient way to find products and information, and simultaneously the rise of search as the best way for advertisers to find and acquire customers.
- There are more than 550 million global searches performed daily on the Web. Internet users in the United States alone perform about 245 million searches per day.
- Because of potency and high ROI of search, online merchandisers and businesses are likely to use it more, at least in the 20% to 30% range of their marketing budgets, as a customer acquisition vehicle.

The U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray search engine research also found that paid listings of the type offered by Overture and Google have the highest overall satisfaction and ROI of various Internet advertising methods.

Types of advertising, ranked by Overall satisfaction & Return on investment:
- Paid listings (Overture, Google) 41% 29%
- Opt-in e-mail 33% 24%
- Paid inclusion 31% 23%
- CPC banners 21% 16%
- CPM banners 19% 12%
*Source: Jupiter Media, Harris Interactive

Safa went on to say:

"the increased popularity of search as the most efficient way to find products and information, and simultaneously the rise of search as the best way for advertisers to find and acquire customers."

Rashtchy has identified five key trends that he believes will shape the future of the search industry, and understanding these trends will enable investors to identify potential winners in this growing market. These trends are:

1. Search Capitalism - Overturism, or the idea of paid search as a market-driven customer acquisition vehicle
2. Googlism - increased importance of relevance and a race to provide the best search experience,
3. Globalism - the increased importance of international markets and its impact on the partnerships among search companies,
4. Elitism - concentration of search among key destinations and the increasing importance of branded destinations, and
5. Realism - the next phase in search: in-context search.

More articles supporting the above:
AdAge.com - Term-Targeting Becoming a Killer App For Online Marketing

sfa.danavan.net has been indexed by Google in record time.
* Proof that subdomains still work if you provide Quasi-unique and original content
* Linking from an established site helps boost rankings substantially
* Weblogs are one of the fastest ways to get ranked and searched.

I've been on the fence about a particular issue lately. We've tried pay-per-click in the past, and I know it works. However, it is very time consuming to manage. I'd like to start doing more of it again, and as I see it, there are two options at this point. We can outsource the management of our PPC campaigns, or keep it in house and purchase some software to better manage and track across multiple campaigns.

In order to make my decision easier, I decided to list the steps and sub steps of creating an effective PPC campaign. In the process, I created more of an article or whitepaper than a simple list. Here it is. Email me your thoughts on it.

1. Determination of business goals and PPC budget (Marketer)
···a. What are your overall business goals and goals for your website. The PPC strategy must work toward these goals. Basic, yes, but this sometimes slips by.
···b. What are you willing to pay? It pays to back this number out based on your known conversion rate or on the value of achieving one of your business goals? Also look at the cost-per-lead that you’re willing to pay. How much are you willing to pay to get there? What is your ‘inquiry’ to ‘lead’ or ‘sale’ conversion rate? With PPC it is very, and I do mean very, easy to overshoot your budget. Determine an acceptable monthly budget number and stick to it.

2. Selection of proper keywords (Marketer)
a. Keywords need to be selected to match your products, services, and brand all while trying to match the behavior of searchers (what do we think our product keywords are vs. what to THEY think our product keywords are) during the various stages of the buying cycle. (First Learn, Further Learn, Purchase Intent).
···b. Pursue keyword research based on the following:
······i. Incoming referring keywords from the search engines
······ii. Map these against keywords at wordtracker.com to find high traffic keywords that may suit your product.
······iii. Review your internal site search for high volume keywords that should be more ‘public’.

3. Gap analysis of selected keywords against organic search results (Vendor)
···a. Before you pay for keywords, it is essential to review each keyword against the major engines with which you purport to engage in PPC with.
···b. Run a web position report or something similar to find first page placements of your chosen keywords. Those keywords, which have not yet achieved first page placement, are likely candidates for inclusion in a PPC campaign.

4. Competitive review of keywords bid on by competitors. Also review organic results of popular keywords.

5. Gap analysis of keywords against landing pages on website. (Marketer/Vendor)
···a. It's one thing to run a PPC campaign with all the right keywords psychographically mapped to your buyers exact behavior at precisely the right moment in the purchase decision process, but if you website doesn’t support the keyword with the proper persuasive marketing material with an acquisition component for you, the marketer, all of your efforts are for naught.
···b. It is absolutely essential that proper landing pages be created to assure users that the keyword they’ve clicked on is for them, and that your product is the right one for them. You can judge the effectiveness of your landing pages by the conversions that they create against the chosen keywords.
···c. Create landing pages, as necessary, to support keywords purchased for PPC.

6. Decide which PPC providers to place keywords with. (Marketer/Vendor)
a. Once you’ve established the keyword set and adjusted your website to support the drive to from the keyword links, it’s time to reserve your space with the various providers. The top 3 are:
···i. Google (essential ? drives over 40% of a site’s search traffic)
···ii. Overture (syndicates it’s listings on several sites ? keep up on the partnerships to ensure maximum reach)
···iii. FindWhat (not the most widely read, but PPC is cheap and industry experts report unusually high conversion rates)

7. Create appropriate keyword listings and supporting verbiage (Marketer)
···a. Research listing parameters with the PPC providers to ensure that you are within the character limits and are not using any illegal words in your listings. Overture is the most stringent, as they review each listing personally.
···b. Relevance is key here. Be sure to choose wording that supports your keyword and entices users to click through for more value.

8. Establish metrics and setup tracking to measure keyword ROI. (Marketer/Vendor)

9. Submit your ad listings and establish your keyword position by placing keyword bids. (Vendor)
···a. Be mindful of your budget. Google’s AdWords setup tools actually calculate this out for you based on projected keyword position and historical CTR of that keyword in said position. If you are lucky enough to find a keyword that no one has purchased, your rate will be very low. At least, until your competitors find out!
···b. The top placement does is not always worth it. Relevancy is KEY here. If you listing is more relevant (keyword and supporting text) it’s CTR will tick up slightly, and your conversion at the website will see significant gains.

10. Manage keyword bids by measurement of clicks and conversions against pre-defined goals and vis-à-vis competitor’s positions. (Marketer/Vendor)
···a. It's essential to measure against YOUR metrics first. Are the keywords, with their respective placements and positions, achieving the results required to achieve you ROI? Give it a month. Drop them if they aren't up to standards.
···b. Also look at what your competition has been doing. Are they bidding up their keyword positions? Should you?

11. Re-bid, adjust keyword listings, revisit step 8. (Vendor)

12. Revisit landing pages - tweak for conversion